xml/lby.00039.xml Icons of Liberty: "The Liberty Bell"

John Bowring, "The Liberty Bell," Liberty Bell (1843)

Transcribed from pages 1-4 of the Liberty Bell, for the year 1843.

The Liberty Bell—The Liberty Bell,
The tocsin of Freedom and Slavery's knell
That a whole long year has idle hung,
Again is waggin its clamorous tongue!
As it merrily swings,
Its notes it flings
On the dreamy ear of the planters and kings,
And it gives them a token,
Of manacles broken;—
And all that the prophets of Freedom have spoken.
With tongues of flame,
(Like those which came
On the men who first spoke the Saviour's name,)
Comes over their soul
As death-bells knowl,
Or the wheels of coming thunder roll!
Our Liberty Bell—
They know it well,
The tocsin of Freedom and Slavery's knell!

The Liberty Bell is hung aloft,
On the transatlantic shore;
And we hear its echoes, oft and oft,
Wafted the waters o'er;
And welcomed shall those echoes be!
Music of Liberty!
Liberty for the white—the few—
From the oppressor's thrall?
Nay! but Liberty,—Liberty, too,
For the blacks,—for all!
Slavery shall not stamp her ban
On any men,—or man

See! there are flowers of every shade
Over earth's bosom spread;
All by the same Great Artist made,
By the same bounty fed;
Brightened by sunshine, freshened by showers,
All those beautiful flowers.

So in the heavens, but differing, far
Differing, in glory and might;
But glorious every one, star by star
Rolls in the car of night;
All outpouring,—all, in their turns,—
Light from their golden urns.

Flowers and stars,—in heaven, on earth,—
The feeblest as the first,
The impress bears of a glorious birth,
And is in glory nurst;
And is led onward gloriously,
Through its varied destiny.

Despised there is none—degraded none;
Each holds its ordered place;
But 't is man—usurping man, alone,
Who hath stigmatized his race;
Who hath giv'n his fellow—O shame! O shame!
A slave's ignoble name!

But, the heavenly elements, which mould,
In man, God's effigy,—
They were never meant to be controlled
To a slave's destiny;
Nor shall they long;—for the slave shall be
As the free-born—aye, as free!

Come, then, that bright and benignant time,
When LIBERTY'S blessed BELL,
All earth re-echoing it, shall chime
Slavery's final knell;
And Slavery's dreary tales be told
As a mythic page of old!

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